Out Of The Past

October 13, 2002|By Matt Schudel Arts Writer

From Miami to Lake Worth, no fewer than five museums are mounting exhibitions this fall of art from Latin America. The most comprehensive of these shows, organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art, presents paintings by 10 artists born in Cuba, Mexico and several countries in South America. If nothing else, "Reality and Configuration: The Contemporary Latin American Presence" makes you realize that a concept as large as "Latin American art" can't be squeezed into a tidy framework, just as you can't easily sum up "American" or "modern" art.

There are many voices and accents on display, each with its own style and emphasis. Some artists borrow from folk traditions, others from photography, classical painting or abstract art. But if a common theme runs through this show, it might be the artists' longing for a lost time of glory and grace. A subtle melancholy seems to echo, however faintly, behind the still surfaces of these canvases. Since many of the artists now live far from their native lands, they draw on their uprooted memories for inspiration.

There are other points of unity, as well. The most obvious is that this is strictly a painting show, with no installations, no "conceptual" pieces or other fashionable absurdities that make North American academics drool. (The Boca museum's last major show was a juried exhibition of work by Florida artists, many of them college professors. First prize was awarded -- no joke -- to a carrot suspended by a red ribbon above a pile of potatoes on the floor.)

In fact, there was an artistic movement in Argentina in the 1980s opposed to the conceptualism and neo-expressionism that have come to dominate so much contemporary European and American art. Three of the leading Argentinean artists to emerge from that period, Guillermo Conte, Daniel Scheimberg and Guillermo Kuitca, are here to show us how moving and smart painting can be when it skips the posturing and gimmicks. Conte's delicate, mysterious works may, in fact, be the most impressive in the exhibition.

He uses dusky tans and greens as his chief colors, then treats the canvas with other pigments and gels to produce patterns resembling the stains of age. These paintings are deeply personal, yet they suggest a search for an irrecoverable past that many of us can share. In three of Conte's works, a pale silhouette of flowers emerges dreamlike from the weathered background. In the fourth, a carefully drawn tree and indecipherable lines of script stand against a pattern that appears to be drawn from a lace tablecloth. It's like finding pressed flowers among a cache of faded family letters.

Scheimberg paints large canvases of ordinary scenes -- but out of focus, as if he never corrected his myopia. They have a strange, disorienting beauty. Landscapes and street fountains may look familiar, but their blurred, melting colors force us to see them with fresh, if strained, eyes.

Kuitca paints both imaginary maps and mathematically exact renderings of theater interiors, often in an intense red. Even without the presence of human figures or obvious narrative material, his paintings convey a fragile sense of loneliness.

Chilean-born Jorge Tacla also incorporates architectural elements into canvases painted mostly in bright blue or reddish orange. He takes us inside a classical rotunda, he makes us look straight up the columns of a colonial building, he shows us a heroic statue atop a pedestal -- but we can never be sure if he finds solace in the past, or sorrow.

Other artists with original, interesting styles include Carlos CapelM-an, a Uruguayan exile whose intricate paintings include carefully delineated patterns of color, contrasting dark backgrounds and drawings incised into the pigment. Brazilian Daniel Senise's stark paintings show disembodied visions of interiors, with doorways leading nowhere and walls that don't touch the floor. The grain of the floorboards, on which he laid his canvases while painting them, give an added visual texture.

The elongated shapes and esoteric religious symbols of Cuban-born artist JosM-i Bedia seem to get trotted out for every exhibition of Latin American art, and this is no exception. Cuban M-imigrM-i Gustavo Acosta paints moody colonial streetscapes, but with unsteady proportion and perspective. The abstract works of another Cuban exile, Luis Cruz Azaceta, are so busy they look like drawers filled with buttons and beads. Mexican artist Julio GalM-an combines portraiture, folk art, kitsch and collage, though not always very well.

But what is remarkable about this exhibition is how well it succeeds in taking us into each artist's distinctive view of the world. No matter where we are from, we all seek ways to repair the fractures between our past and our present. We all want to find continuity amid constant change. And we look to art to help us find our way.

Matt Schudel can be reached at mschudel@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4689.